Can Your Company Roll with the Punches?

Building an agile organization

To keep up in the modern marketplace, business organizations can no longer rely on traditional management structures. Companies need to be able to respond agilely, avoiding the punches thrown by rapidly changing retail patterns, disruption, and intense competition.

The secret to successful leadership is the ability to build or find the right teams to implement corporate visions. An agile environment gives organizations the tools to quickly pivot and respond to the demands of the marketplace.

Leading Edge Magazine emphasizes the importance of empowering small teams as the basic building blocks of an agile organization:

Agile organizations empower small teams to develop new processes or products in their own way. Instead of saying, “Here’s what I want, and here are the steps to get there; report to me on progress,” an executive working with an agile team dispenses with roadmaps and planning, leaving it to the team to figure out how best to accomplish goals. Leaders jump in to solve problems and remove constraints, rather than delegating tasks to subordinates.

The Need for Speed

Agile organizations are also characterized by fast learning and decision cycles aided by Big Data analysis and machine learning. Writing for McKinsey Quarterly, Aaron De Smet and Chris Gagnon report that businesses must be able to leverage technology to remain competitive:

The urgency imperative places a premium on agility: it enables the shift to emergent strategy, while unleashing your people so they can reshape your business in real time. It’s also a powerful means of minimizing confusion and complexity in our world of rapid-fire digital communications where everyone can talk with everyone else — and will, gumming up the works if you don’t have a sensible set of operating norms in place. Agility is also the ideal way to integrate the power of machine-made decisions, which are going to become increasingly important to your fundamental decision system.

Finding the Right Partner

Without the right mix of institutional knowledge and technical know-how, undertaking the transformation to an agile organization can be challenging. Companies can benefit from partnering with experienced outside vendors who specialize in building agile teams and integrating the use of Big Data analysis in business operations.

LMS specializes in building and fielding agile teams that can transform client operations. We can design and implement the digital infrastructure required to use Big Data analysis and machine learning to quickly respond to changing conditions. Contact us by phone at 800.257.5902 or via email at [email protected]